Welcome to WWU’s Landscape Observatory!

We have created this web site to help students investigate dynamic evolution of landscapes through the use of live web cams and digital time-lapse imagery. By combining these elements on the web, we hope to provide you with a new understanding of and appreciation for the rates and mechanisms of landscape development.

The Concept: Landscapes are dynamic features that can change rapidly, even on human time scales. Often, however, the processes are too slow to witness directly, particularly within the constraints of a quarter-long or semester-long class. In this web, we’ve constructed web cams to record the development of two very different landforms:

a stream-table delta

a large, natural landslide

Each landform provides different environments to explore. The delta develops very rapidly (a matter of days), in a very controlled setting, and can be repeated or modified in a myriad of ways. The landslide, in contrast, is a wholly natural phenomenon that responds to a complex and uncontrolled set of variables that we are only just beginning to investigate.

Explore our web site and see these landforms develop before your eyes.